An Insight on the Evolution of Education
At the second matriculation ceremony of Miva Open University, we were honoured to host His Excellency, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, GCON, former Vice President of Nigeria, as the keynote speaker. In his address, Professor Osinbajo highlighted the significance of Miva Open University’s innovative approach to education and its critical role in bridging the gap in access to higher learning in Nigeria.
With his decades of experience as an academic, his speech resonated deeply with students and faculty, offering insightful perspectives on how education must evolve in response to modern challenges and the growing demands of the job market.
As we celebrate the matriculating class of 2024, we are reminded that Miva Open University stands at the forefront of this educational revolution, preparing future leaders with the skills and mindset needed to thrive in a world shaped by technology and global collaboration.
Keynote Speech by His Excellency, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, GCON, at the Second Matriculation Ceremony of Miva Open University in Abuja, on 19th October, 2024
Protocols
It is such a great pleasure to join you today at this second matriculation ceremony of this incredibly unique university, the MIVA Open University. I must especially thank the Chancellor of the University, the visioner and pioneer of Nigeria’s, I believe, first fully operational private open university, Mr. Sim Shagaya, for the kind invitation to me to give this keynote speech. And perhaps more importantly, congratulate him and his team for the establishment of this history-making virtual citadel of learning, research and innovation. To the matriculating class of 2024, I offer my heartfelt congratulations.
This day marks the beginning of an extraordinary journey in higher education, one that places you at the forefront of a revolutionary model that redefines learning with unparalleled innovation. May I also pay special tribute to the esteemed faculty of MIVA Open University, a distinguished body of scholars and academics charged with the profound responsibility of shaping the future of tertiary education.
It is your role to train a new generation of leaders—leaders who will be equipped not only to navigate but to thrive and innovate in a world defined by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.
I must also say how excited I am to be in the company of university teachers, scholars and students. Teaching is my first love and I have been a university teacher for 43 years now and I started teaching at the University of Lagos when I was 24. So, I have been a teacher for most of my life.
Let me say straight away that MIVA Open University is the future of university education brought at high speed to the present day. There is no way that higher education in Africa can be effectively delivered to the number of those who want university degrees if we have to build physical universities to accommodate them. Why?
Every year, more than 1.7 million applicants write the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), and an average of 400,000 gain admission into the universities.
So, 1.3 million mostly young people annually are eligible but will not have any university admission. Consider also that Nigeria is growing at 6 million people a year; there is no way a brick-and-mortar approach to providing infrastructure for university education can ever work.
We must also realise, and when I say we, I mean education policymakers, teachers, students and employers of labour, that education as we knew it is gone forever.
Now and in the future, what we teach and how we teach will never be the same again. This change is motivated by the type and quality of employees that the market wants today and will take for granted tomorrow. And also, how technology, especially artificial intelligence and machine learning, is rapidly transforming business, the professions and the entire marketplace.
The innovative, efficient, tech-savvy, problem-solving employee who is a skilled collaborator or co-creator is what the employer wants today. So how do we achieve that? First, with teaching, the emphasis is going to be on critical thinking and problem-solving. Information gathering, memorizing and regurgitating information is dead.
There is so much information and analysis of information already, and that is even more versatile and intelligent with AI tools, so the emphasis now is not on how much information you have but how you can use it to solve real-life problems. And real-life problems are many and varied and not tied to the curricula in many of the old and existing disciplines.
So welcome to the new world of Modular Education. Modular education includes micro-credentials and digital badges. These are short training targeted at providing the student with a particular skill or knowledge, usually specifically required in a particular industry or profession.
So, for example, IBM’s Digital Badging programs may offer micro-credentials in areas like Cloud Computing, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Cybersecurity. These programs are offered in the Computer Science department here at MIVA Open University.
These micro-credentials focus on critical, high-demand skills, preparing learners to work in specialised areas of IT without requiring a full degree. Modular education could potentially rival traditional university degrees in the future, especially as the world of work and learning continues to evolve.
Teaching methods and resources are changing and must continue to evolve. Learning will be increasingly personalised. In other words, students will be able to learn at their own pace. This is now possible and will become the norm as greater use is made of data-based insights.
Adaptive learning platforms can now use artificial intelligence to design coursework to meet the specific needs of every individual student and the best pace at which to teach the student! We are also going to see more teaching using Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) technologies.
The use of these immersive tools, which provide hands-on learning that can be repeated over and over again by the student, is changing and will permanently change how disciplines like medicine, architecture, law, engineering, and the arts are taught.
So, using these tools, for example, a student of orthopaedic surgery will have hands-on learning experiences in a virtual environment. Students using VR can explore 3D, high-resolution models of the human body, especially the musculoskeletal system, in a fully immersive virtual environment.
They can manipulate bones, tissues, and joints from various angles, allowing them to understand anatomy. Using Virtual Reality, students can perform complete orthopaedic surgeries in a virtual operating room. They can practice complex procedures like joint replacement or fracture fixation in a risk-free environment.
The VR system can simulate real-life scenarios, such as handling surgical tools, bone drilling, or tissue manipulation, providing valuable hands-on experience. For lawyers in training, the same principle works. They would be able to participate in virtual courtroom environments, and unlike in-person teaching, which is one-off and for multiple students, this provides almost personalised training and repeat of the processes until the student is satisfied.
Let me now share a few minutes with the matriculating students what, in my humble view, is the soul of real success. Real success has a soul; it has a DNA. Real success is not doing well for a few years or gathering some internet followers for some time; real success is leaving a lasting impact through your work, contributions to society, or the values imparted to others. It’s about what endures beyond one’s immediate lifetime.
What then are the critical must-haves and must-dos for real success? The first is integrity; it might sound like a cliché today, but it is absolutely the cornerstone of real success. Let your yes be yes and your no be no.
Be known for your consistency in applying high moral principles. If you borrow money, repay; don’t make promises you cannot fulfil. Integrity pays, and it is getting scarcer, so it is in demand. The man who people can say has integrity will be sought after by everyone—even thieves are looking for a man of integrity to keep their stolen money with.
Life is a marathon, not a hundred-meter dash. The person who will last in the marathon is a trustworthy person because trust is the currency of business and even interpersonal relationships. If you are known to have no integrity, everyone will soon know it, and because many of the best opportunities you will get will be based on recommendations, it is easy to become unmarketable.
The other “must haves” are hard work and diligence. Being smart and talented is great, but one of the reasons why many smart and talented people don’t succeed is that they are not hard-working and diligent. Diligence is key.
The ability to do important things even when they are boring, consistently and dutifully day after day is harder to find than talent. The ability to start and finish a task, especially when it is over a long period and there is little to no supervision, is harder to achieve than being smart.
Good training for diligence is to read books from the beginning to the end. Train your mind to complete tasks, to persevere. Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, once said, “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.”
The third critical element is a subject that has occupied my mind for a while and I will spend a little longer on it. It is the power of Collaboration or Co-creation. Somewhere in the Old Testament of the Bible, Genesis 11:6 NLT. God said, “Look! “The people are united, and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them!”
This was the Almighty God speaking about people who had decided to come together to build a tower that would reach the heavens. And God himself said once the human species unite, nothing will be impossible for them. This is the power of collaboration.
Collaboration is simply defined as working with others to execute an idea or solve a problem. It is unlikely that there is any greater force that drives change and transformation than the force of united action or collaboration. Several of the world’s biggest problems have been solved by the power of collaboration.
There is limitless power in human synergy. The collective genius of several minds working together on any project creates a dynamic by which the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Collaboration amplifies the strengths of the collaborators and transcends their individual limitations, giving birth to innovation that defies the constraints of normal human potential.
Almost every phenomenal achievement in science, technology or the arts is an awesome triumph of collaboration. Indeed, in the past few decades, especially in science and technology, the Nobel Prizes have been awarded to teams of scientists, not individuals, underscoring the fact that teamwork is what is taking us into the future.
Here are a few notable examples of outstanding achievements by collaboration: The creation of the Internet was the result of decades of collaborative work between government agencies, universities, and private companies. Pioneers like Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, who developed the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), worked with teams across institutions to create the foundation of the modern Internet.
The World Wide Web, developed by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, was another collaborative effort that turned the Internet into a user-friendly platform for communication and information exchange.
Man’s first landing on the moon on Apollo 11 in 1969 is a tribute to the power of collaboration. The Apollo program was a monumental collaborative effort involving over 400,000 engineers, scientists, and technicians from multiple industries, universities, and government agencies, including NASA.
From the development of the spacecraft to the complex calculations necessary for the mission’s success, the Apollo program was a testament to human collaboration on a grand scale. It required coordinated efforts across disciplines like physics, engineering, computer science, and biology, all working towards the shared goal of safely sending astronauts to the moon and bringing them back.
Now we have the International Space Station. The International Space Station (ISS) is a symbol of global collaboration in space exploration. A partnership between the U.S. (NASA), Russia (Roscosmos), Europe (ESA), Japan (JAXA), and Canada (CSA). The ISS was assembled in orbit over decades.
How about the Manhattan Project, which led to the development of the first nuclear bomb during World War II and several advances in nuclear physics since then? This was a massive collaborative effort involving scientists from the U.S., U.K., and Canada. Over 130,000 people worked on the project, including some of the greatest minds in physics like Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Niels Bohr.
One of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of all time is the Human Genome Project. The Human Genome Project was a massive scientific effort that aimed to map out all the genes in human DNA. The project, which began in 1990 and was completed in 2003, involved scientists from many countries working together. By the end of the project, they had successfully mapped the human genome, which consists of over 20,000 genes and 3 billion “letters” of DNA.
The project revolutionised our understanding of genetics and laid the groundwork for advances in medicine, biotechnology, and personalised healthcare.
How about the collaboration between art and technology that gave birth to the Pixar Animation Studios? Artists, animators, and computer scientists collaborated to develop groundbreaking films like Toy Story, the world’s first fully computer-animated feature film.
Mark Zuckerberg was the original visioner and programmer behind Facebook, but he had four collaborators. Eduardo Saverin—he was involved in the business side; Andrew McCollum—was involved in early design aspects and designed the site’s logo and other user interface icons. Dustin Moskovitz, he assisted with programming and expanding the platform. Chris Hughes played a role in promoting and managing the early stages of Facebook.
Andela, the three-billion-dollar tech company known for training tech talents in Africa, was not the creation of Jeremy Johnson, its current CEO. Other cofounders were Iyin Aboyeji, Christina Sass—who focused on the educational and training aspects of Andela’s model, and Ian Carnevale—who contributed to Andela’s vision and helped in building the company’s strategy.
The distinguished Chancellor of this university is, as you know, a serially successful entrepreneur and he is one who exemplifies this idea of co-creation and collaboration as a principle of ideation, execution and operation. So, when establishing Konga, Nigeria’s first and largest online mall, he collaborated with two other innovators, Sola Adekoya and Babajinmi Ayorinde.
Even this university, MIVA Open University, is a product of an ongoing collaborative effort between the visioner and Aniekeme Umoh, who is now the Chief Operating Officer, Iheanyi Akwitti, now the Chief Academic Officer, and Prof. Tayo Arulogun, now the current Vice Chancellor of the University. The collaborative effort is what we see today.
And the innovative operationalisation of the university is also collaborative. MIVA operates not just as a stand-alone online university but also as a coordinator of a superior learning ecosystem of adjunct lecturers all over the world who can give Miva students office hours or direct teaching assistance outside of the regular teaching regimes of the university.
Today, from basic education to the tertiary level, the teaching of collaboration and co-creation are important features of teaching curricula, the methods include Project-Based Learning, Design Thinking Workshops, deployment of Digital Collaboration Tools.
So with platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Workspace, students and professionals are learning to collaborate digitally across geographical boundaries, co-creating documents, projects, and ideas in real-time. Also, many tech companies now teach agile frameworks, which prioritise continuous collaboration and co-creation among cross-functional teams to deliver iterative results.
Collaboration is certainly critical to success in practically every endeavour. I cannot remember who made the wise observation that “If you want to walk fast, walk alone, but if you want to walk far, walk together.”
I had the benefit of speaking to Chancellor Sim Shagaya on the subject of collaboration and he said, “The first question I ask myself at the stage of development of an idea is who can I work with? Because that is probably the best answer to the question, “Will it work?” This is an important and guiding principle for most of us who will become entrepreneurs and experts of various kinds.
Once again, congratulations to you, the matriculating class of 2024. You are the fortunate recipients of university education at the most advanced moment in human history. Live up to the challenge of this great opportunity, and I pray that your journey will be smooth and that you will achieve great success.
Thank you very much.
A Powerful Reminder
Professor Osinbajo’s speech serves as a powerful reminder of the transformative impact of education, especially in a world increasingly driven by technology. At Miva Open University, we are proud to embrace this challenge, offering a flexible, tech-driven, and modular education model that empowers students to acquire critical skills that go beyond traditional academic boundaries.
As our matriculating students embark on this journey, we are confident that they will not only excel academically but also contribute meaningfully to society. With integrity, diligence, and collaboration as guiding principles, Miva Open University is committed to shaping the future of education in Nigeria and beyond.
